Certain print-receptive media of the type used to create small-size printed products, such as, but not limited to, business cards, ROLODEX-type cards, greeting cards, place cards, invitations, identification badges, and address labels, because of their small sizes, cannot be fed individually into and easily printed onto using conventional ink jet printers, laser printers, photocopiers, and other ordinary printing and typing devices. Therefore, one known method of producing such printed products has been to print desired indicia on different portions of a standard-sized sheet of print-receptive material, such as a letter-size sheet (i.e., 8.5 inches×11 inches), a legal-size sheet (i.e., 8.5 inches×14 inches), or an A4-size sheet (i.e., 8.27 inches×11.69 inches), and then to cut the sheet with a suitable cutting device into individual small-size printed media. However, this method is disadvantageous because the user must have access to such a cutting device, and the separate cutting step is cost and time inefficient.
In order to avoid the above-described cutting step, another known product has the perimeters of the media (e.g., the business cards) formed using a grid of horizontal and vertical microperforation lines extending the full length and width of the sheet. Although these microperforations are typically small and close together, with typically more than fifty microperforations per inch, when the cards are separated from one another by tearing along the microperforation lines, perfectly clean edges for the media typically do not result. Instead, the edges for the media are usually slightly fuzzy, giving the media a less professional appearance than media produced by cutting with a cutting device.
Accordingly, a first alternate approach to the above-described use of microperforations is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,993,928, inventor Popat, which issued Nov. 30, 1999, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. According to this first alternate approach, there is provided a card stock sheet having two parallel pairs of substantial-cut lines extending the length of the sheet and engaging the sheet at both ends thereof. The substantial-cut lines extend about 90% through the thickness of the sheet from the front towards the back surface. The sheet is then die cut with short (through-cut) lines extending widthwise between the lines of each pair, or vice versa. The substantial-cut and through-cut lines form on the sheet two columns of business card blanks, with paper waste strips at the side (and end) margins and between the columns. After being passed through a printing device, the printed cards are separated from one another by tearing or pulling along the substantial-cut lines. No further separation is required along the through-cut lines.
A second alternate approach is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2001/0007703 A1, inventors Weirather et al., which was published Jul. 12, 2001, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. According to this second alternate approach, there is provided a dry laminated business card sheet construction. The construction includes a low density polyethylene film layer extrusion coated on a densified bleached kraft paper liner to form a film-coated liner sheet. A facestock sheet is adhered with a layer of hot melt adhesive to the film layer to form a laminate sheet web, which is rolled on a roll. The facestock sheet, the film layer and the adhesive layer together define a laminate feedstock. The roll is transported to and loaded on a press with the liner side up. One or both edges of the web are crushed with a calendaring die to form thin lead-in edge(s). The web is die cut on the bottom face, up through the laminate facestock, but not through the paper liner, to form the perimeters of a grid of blank business cards or other printable media, with a waste paper frame of the laminate encircling the grid. The web is then die cut from the top through the paper liner and to, but not through, the laminate facestock, to form liner strips covering the back face of the laminate facestock. According to one embodiment, alternate ones of the strips are then pulled off of the laminate facestock web. A final production step is to sheet the web to form the desired sheet width (or length) of the laminated sheet construction. The individual laminated business card sheets can be stacked into the infeed tray of an ink jet printer, for example, and the sheets individually and automatically fed, lead-in edge first, into the printer and a printing operation performed on each of the printable media, to form a sheet of printed media. The remaining strips on the back of the laminate facestock cover the lateral cut lines in the laminate facestock and, thereby, holds the facestock together as it is fed into and passed through the printer. The user then individually peels the printed media off of the strips and out from the waste paper frame. Thereby, printed business cards (or other printed media), each with its entire perimeter defined by clean die cuts, are formed.
A third alternate approach is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2003/0148056 A1, inventors Utz et al., which was published on Aug. 7, 2003, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. According to this third alternate approach, there is provided a card sheet including a top material having punched lines, the front side of the top material being printable. A carrier material of at least one polymer layer is directly applied, as by extruding, to the back side of the top material. The polymer has a stress-at-break in the range of 10 to 30 MPa and an elongation at break in the range of 10 to 120%. From the card sheet, individual cards can be broken out to form high quality calling (business) cards, photograph cards, postcards or the like.
A fourth alternate approach is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,625,619, inventors Hodson et al., which issued on Dec. 1, 2009, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. According to this fourth alternate approach, there is provided a label sheet construction including a liner sheet and a facestock sheet releasably adhered to the liner sheet. A plurality of labels and fold lines are die cut in the facestock sheet but not in the liner sheet. The fold lines extend between the labels. After the sheet construction has been passed through a printer or copier and the desired indicia printed on the labels, the construction (an upper portion thereof) is bent back along one of the fold lines. This separates an upper portion of the label from the underlying liner sheet. The user then easily grasps the upper portion and peels the label off of the liner sheet without tearing the label.
Regardless of which approach is taken to enable the standard-size sheet to be separated, following printing, into smaller-size printed products, in order to have the printed products be durable and professional looking, they must be made from relatively thick and heavy sheets, i.e., sheets typically having a thickness of at least 4 mils (i.e., 0.004 inch). However, printing devices often have difficulty picking up and advancing such thick and heavy sheets through their oftentimes tortuous printing paths. As a result, the use of such sheets often leads to registration problems, i.e., printed matter not appearing on a sheet in its intended location. As can be appreciated, such registration problems can have a significant negative impact on the appearance of the printed product. One of the most common types of registration problems is known as “start of print off-registration” (also known as “off-registration start”), which is typified by print being shifted up or down from its expected starting position relative to the top of the sheet.
One approach to dealing with registration problems resulting from the pick up and feeding of thick sheets of material into printing devices is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,704,317, inventors Hickenbotham et al., which issued Nov. 3, 1987, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The approach of the aforementioned patent involves reducing the stiffness of the corners of a sheet by forming a diagonal path of relatively low stiffness across each of at least two adjacent corners, preferably all four corners. Such a path is said to preferably be made by forming slits, scores or a line of perforations extending at 45° to the edges of the sheet. However, a number of problems with the aforementioned method have prevented it from becoming generally commercially acceptable.
Another approach to dealing with registration problems resulting from the pick up and feeding of thick sheets of material into printing devices is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,571,587, inventors Bishop et al., which issued Nov. 5, 1996, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The approach of the aforementioned patent involves securing a relatively thin portion of material on at least one of the longitudinal edges of a sheet to facilitate feeding the sheet into a printer or copier. After printing, the thin portion of material is removed from the sheet, and the printed products are separated from one another.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that approaches like those described above have been taken in an effort to address registration issues, such as “start of print off-registration,” a satisfactory approach to dealing with such registration issues has not yet been devised.
It should, therefore, be appreciated that there is a need for a sheet construction that includes one or more print-receptive media and that reduces the occurrence of certain print registration issues, particularly “start of print off-registration,” even when the sheet construction is fairly thick. The present invention satisfies this need.